Dear Spice

Dear Spice, 

I bet you’re reading this in some sort of uncomfortable position. 

You’re probably sitting upside-down on the couch, with your feet dangling over the back edge and your head prickling with the slow rush of blood, chin tucked into your chest as you flick through these loose pages. 

You might be chewing on a sticky-sweet date, following a dish of curry coconut rice with tangy lemon chicken, or sipping black sun tea (which sounds awfully nice right now). 

At this moment, I’m trying to think of how to address a letter to future Spice. First of all, I hope I find myself a better nickname. If you don’t remember Kelly MacWilde, she’s the one that first started calling you Spice, back in seventh grade. It wasn’t even for the grilled chicken wings I’d brought to school that had made the cafeteria microwave smell of drool-worthy heat, but for the mud that spotted my face, my arms, my skirts, following the weekly games of tag outside in the pouring rain of the grassy schoolyard. 

Anyway, Spice, please don’t cut your hair short again. My buzzcut has been growing out for months now, and the endless bedhead messy mop is driving me crazy. I mean, it’s one thing to be confident in yourself when all your beautiful black hair is missing, but it’s another thing to wake up with frizzy half-curls sprawling down the back of your neck, looking quite like a burnt up matchstick. So please, if you’re reading this and you’ve forgotten what a pain it is to wake up and find your nearest hat, maybe don’t shave your head again. 

Do you still have Bruce? The teeny tiny goldfish you won from the circus over the summer? He’s swimming circles around the rabbit-shaped rock I found at the river. I wonder if you have some kind of exotic pet by now. I mean, you’re twenty-one at this point… (unless you lost the envelope this letter was in, which honestly wouldn’t surprise me.) What with all the agony over not opening a box with a puppy on birthday mornings, I hope you at least have considered a buddy. 

I hope you aren’t too boring. 

I hope you finally got rich. Well, okay, I’ll be fine if we aren’t rich, but please… I wanna be rich enough to buy flowers for strangers and leave large tips for young waitresses and hand my roller coaster tickets to the younger kid behind me in line. I want to spend money just for fun, just to share, just to see some joy. Know that I’m typing this from dad’s old laptop, which is currently whirring and heating up like it’s going to catch fire or explode. 

What’s college like Spice? Is it cool? I bet it’s hard. But I bet you have some cool friends by now. Do you have a party friend, that’s always ready to pass you a drink? The mom friend that takes those drinks away and passes out mints? Which friend are you? My guess is the dork. I think every group has one of those, like a jack-of-all-trades that goofs around but gets work done even if the brain farts get interesting. You know, like when I couldn’t spell “would’ve” for a solid minute in AP Lit last year. Or when I walk into the screen door because I’m so excited to see the neighbor’s cat. I bet you haven’t changed there, have you?

Dear Spice– no, that’s too formal. 

Hey Spice– that sounds like an email. 

To the Spice that is reading the end half of this letter with warming cheeks and blurry vision: please don’t forget where you started. 

I’m budgeting and I’m studying and I’m working so hard. 

I’m trying every single day. Trying to be the best friend, trying to be the best student, trying to be the best worker and saver, and everything I can possibly need to be. I’m losing my chances to work out, and then I’m losing my will to finish all my finals, and I’m slowly losing my want to continue to college after I finish my senior year. 

I’m running in place with my feet slipping over ice, barely making it up the hill without slamming my face down and splitting my chin. 

I can keep going, but I need you to remember this. 

I’m struggling, and you’re going to reflect what I’m doing right now. 

If I skipped my math final, you’d be reading this with piles of the math courses you’d be taking in college rather than high school. 

If I ate like shit, you’d be struggling mentally and physically with your health. 

Everything I do isn’t as in the moment as I used to think. Everything I do is for you, Future Spice. 

So repeat after me. 

I am going to work hard. I am going to try my best on each and every final, and trust that everything I have done to prepare will get me exactly where I need to be. I will be okay with struggling and I will cry and take breaks but I promise I won’t get back into this slump. I’ll keep going, I swear to you Spice. 

You can do this. You really can. And I can’t wait to be you in a handful of years, look back on the awkward braces photos and mid-laugh prom memories and everything I’m doing right now. I’ll save you some essays, maybe a science lab, and you can compare it to the work you’re doing to get your bachelor’s degree. 

Who knows, Spice? Maybe you’ll be engaged. 

Who knows what the future holds for us?

Anyway. Now that I’ve covered everything I think I’ve needed to say, I’m going to seal this in an envelope and tuck it away in a box. In about twenty minutes, when I’m stirring the charred tomatoes around in a pan to make pasta sauce, I’ll remember something extremely important that I should’ve said. I might come back to this envelope and unseal it because I know I misspelled something and it’ll bug me for years if I can’t fix it. Maybe I’ll find this box in sixty years or something and laugh, or maybe I’ll open it at midnight on my twenty-first birthday, chewing on that date or sitting upside-down on the couch. Still, this is it. 

So long, Future Spice. 

I swear I’ll take good care of us. Good luck ‘til twenty-one! 

Love, 

Old Spice <3

(maybe Young Spice… Depends on how you look at this…)